For our next destination, we'll have a bit of walking to do. Our closest recall point is the Illusory Castle, then we need to go south for a while. Then east through the Gap of Rohan. And we reach the entrance to the Paths of the Dead. We recall to 3750ft, our goal being 3850ft this time. Our ESP hat detects Harowen and Khamul in the distance. Harowen is already heading towards us. We get rid of him easily and pick up his loot:

Good protection against thunder effects, but not enough speed to consider using them. While we check these drops, Khamul is already on his way. He's dead before he realizes it, and then we dispatch his summons. Then we examine HIS drops.

Too light for us, even with two extra blows. We find stairs near and we take them to 3800ft. Our arkenstone reveals a huge Curlicues vault to the east, and our ESP hat detects Tselakus along with all sorts of high undead, but the area should be manageable. And we are a necromancer anyway... And to add to our options, we even find a scroll of mass banishment on our way to the vault. One of the two hardest undead on the level, a dreadlord, isn't even in the vault. We kill him for:

Code:

q) the Pair of Iron Shod Boots of Gimli (+5,+5) [4,+30] <+3>
Dropped by a dreadlord at 3800 feet (level 76).
+3 strength.
+3 searching skill.
+3 infravision.
+3 tunneling.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
When activated, it maps out a portion of the level around you.
Takes 153 to 300 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 96.6%

Problem: we didn't start to clear the vault, and we're already down to three free inventory slots. And we find a scroll of banishment on our way. Since there's no way we'll be able to recall with it and since there are stuff like grand master mystics/grand swordsmasters on the level, we decide to read it to banish the "p" race on the level. And while we clear some dreads along the way, we get two more artifacts:

Inferior to what we currently use. And we're now down to a single free inventory slot... We still decide to see what's in the vault, even if it means leaving many things behind. If we have to, we'll leave a few crap randarts behind, they'll reappear later under another form. First spiral of the vault has nothing. Second spiral has Tselakus, so we lure him away. And he too forgets he can cast threatening spells, so we pelt him with arrows and even finish him off in melee. First thing we find in the pile of trash he drops is a scroll of wilderness mapping, so we read it and learn the area at 31 south 37 east. That's near the Sandworm Lair, and we don't plan on going there anymore. Next is a potion of enlightenment, so we may as well quaff it. Nothing new on radar, but there's a mace of disruption in the vault, which could be good. We also see two necromancer books, but that's the two we already have... we'll probably have to go deeper to find our last spellbook (its native depth is 4500ft). From Tselakus drops, we find this interesting artifact:

Code:

p) the Iron Helm of Knowledge [7,+20] <+1>
Dropped by Tselakus, the Dreadlord at 3800 feet (level 76).
+1 light.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Identifies all items for you.
When activated, it detects all treasure, objects and monsters in the
immediate area, and maps out a small portion of the level around you.
Takes 114 to 222 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 95.1%

Much less useful as it used to be when items had to be identified one by one. And we've pretty much identified all runes and flavors already. Nothing in the second spiral, the various undead must have picked up the items and dropped them near Tselakus' loot pile. We kill a nightwalker (hardest enemy in the vault), and reach:

Lvl: 45, HP: 875, SP: 361

That's roughly half the experience required to advance to level 50... but we'll get there eventually. The third spiral is cleared, and we continue splattering more undead. Unfortunately, the mace of disruption in the fourth spiral is only magical. It does over 500 vs undead though... All is left now is clear the right part. And the first thing we find could be useful...

Code:

v) the Mattock of Náin <+4, +6>
Found lying on the floor in a vault at 3800 feet (level 76).
+4 strength.
+4 searching skill.
+4 infravision.
+6 tunneling.
Provides resistance to dark, disenchantment.
Grants the ability to sense orcs.
When aimed, it creates a line of rock remover, inflicting 20+1d30 points
of damage to susceptible monsters, which your device skill increases by
48 percent.
Takes 5 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 93.4%

That should allow us to wear those +10 speed boots again. Unfortunately, a nexus quylthulg teleports us away, and we have to make our way back to the vault. By doing so, we kill a nightcrawler and get a Silver rod (of Cold Balls). Since we won't have the room to recall with the scroll of mass banishment we have found, we read it to get rid of the annoying quylthulg and the remaining monsters in the vault. We pick up more artifacts and recall.

Code:

n) the Set of Leather Gloves of Ekkas [1,+8] <+2, +6>
Found lying on the floor in a vault at 3800 feet (level 76).
+2 strength.
+2 constitution.
+6 mana capacity.
Provides resistance to cold, dark, shards, chaos.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Prevents paralysis.
Grants the ability to sense animals.
When aimed, it shoots a bolt of magical energy that inflicts 150 points
of damage, which your device skill increases by 97 percent.
Takes 252 to 308 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 97.8%

Decent sling, but can't compete with our current bow. Back in Bree, we drop that sling (it's better than the one we have stored) and get back our +10 speed randart boots as we exchange Erebor for Nain. We unload our backpack and recall back to the Paths of the Dead at 3800ft. Nothing except a pit in the distance, and our ESP hat shows us that's an undead pit. If only we had the last spellbook... As we make our way to the stairs, we find out that there's a pool of water in the bend of an U-shaped corridor leading to the graveyard. We take advantage of the terrain and obliterate all the non passwall undead from the graveyard, just having to deal with the dreadlords and archliches in melee. One of them drops a new potion, a Copper Speckled potion (of *Restore Mana*). Soon only remains a lone druj in the pit. We kill it and look for loot, but there's nothing except a new rod, an Aluminium rod (of Drain Life). We go back to the nearby stairs and go down to 3850ft. No special features there, and Feagwath stands in the middle of the level with his escort. We feel something worthwhile on the level though and decide to explore a bit. And we find this in the corner of the level:

Code:

s) the Glaive of Pain (9d6) (+0,+30)
Found lying on the floor at 3850 feet (level 77).
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Combat info:
4.0 blows/round.
Average damage/round: 354.

That would be an amazing weapon if we had the proper gloves with slay evil. We'll carry it for a while in case we find such gloves (in the meantime, we can use all scrolls of enchant weapon we find on it to improve its to-hit). We pacify a black reaver (here again, it would have make a formidable ally for the upcoming battle if we had our last spellbook), and approach Feagwath to wake up his dread army. We get rid of the various dreads, lords and masters, then manage to kill Feagwath with stopping only once to heal a manastorm (I love mana resistance). From his unlife-less corpse, we pick up:

Definitely something we can store for later use, an off-weapon brand is always nice to have. We're done here, so we recall back to Bree. Before taking on Sauron and Morgoth, we have one dungeon left to clear... and it's the volcanic area of Mount Doom. Since it's probably easier to navigate in a normal dungeon, we will finally make our way to Carn Dum and settle our base camp there. We will dive in Angband, until we're ready to take on Sauron's most powerful minion: the Balrog of the Sammath Naur.

Time to say goodbye to Bree. We collect everything that was stored in one of our houses and sell that house. We recall to Carn Dum, go south to the closest suburb area and buy the biggest house we can afford. It takes us many trips from Bree to Carn Dum, but we manage to move everything we own to our new house. We sell the second house we had near Bree and say goodbye to the area. Back to Carn Dum, we reorganize our house and pick up consumables for the next dive. Including scrolls of deep descent to skip floors until 4500ft, where we hope to get our last spellbook. We try to recharge our staff of healing but fail, so we take a few potions of healing for emergencies. We enter the town, check the shops and recall in the dungeon. We don't get distracted by the two dragon pits on the level and immediately read three scrolls of deep descent to dive directly to 4600ft. We are immediately aware of Carcharoth, Draugluin and Ungoliant. And soon we also spot Maeglin, which is awake and heading for us. At this depth, he's able to summon very nasty stuff... and he does. Soon we have to deal with an ancient shadow wyrm, and since we don't want more ancient wyrms around, we teleport him away. While we do this, Carcharoth sneakily moves in sight and starts breathing darkness at us. That's bad. We phase away, and since we land closer to Carcharoth, we simply also teleport him away. We retreat in a corridor to leave the summons behind and start bashing Maeglin with our sword again. Soon he flees, but instantly summons a pack of liches. And his summons are back. But before we can act, a crypt thing teleports us away. This will give us some respite. Soon Maeglin has found us again, but he's down to 10% of his health and dies in a few rounds. Draugluin has followed him, but we need some rest before we can take him down, so we teleport him away. We look at Maeglin's drop, which consist of a +13 speed ring (we replace our old +11 one), and this crossbow:

We're not a goblin, and this won't be as good as our current bow. Now Ungoliant has awoken too, and we need to get rid of her. We'll throw her in a corner of the level. We kill a great swamp wyrm and reach...

Lvl: 46, HP: 897, SP: 369

Looking around on the level, we also find an Amber amulet (of the Magi), some spellbooks for other classes, and this DSM:

Code:

o) the Green Dragon Scale Mail 'Green Heart' (-2) [20,+25] <+2>
Found lying on the floor in a vault at 4600 feet (level 92).
+2 speed.
Provides resistance to poison, time.
Makes you fall like a feather.
Grants the ability to sense orcs.
When aimed, it allows you to breathe poison for 150 points of damage.
Takes 175 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 93.4%

We find Draugluin and kill him, but don't get any loot. Now the level is dangerously filled with a lot of ancient wyrms and other nasties, so we simply leave it via the closest stairs. Next level doesn't feel risky, and we find out it's a cavern level. We pick up a second ring of speed +11 while moving around, and also:

Code:

q) the Beaked Axe of Théoden (2d8) (+8,+10) <+3>
Found lying on the floor of a cavern at 4650 feet (level 93).
+3 wisdom.
+3 constitution.
Slays dragons.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Slows your metabolism.
Grants telepathy.
When activated, it inflicts 120 points of damage on a single creature
that is not undead, a demon, a golem, an elemental or a vortex.
Takes 140 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 97.1%
Combat info:
This weapon should be wielded with both hands.
4.0 blows/round.
Average damage/round: 244 vs. dragons, and 164 vs. others.

We don't stay more than we need and go down to 4700ft. Here we can see a graveyard and an ethereal dragon pit which has five ancient ethereal wyrms. Since we find a potion of enlightenment, might as well see if there's something interesting to grab on this level. There's a new rod inside the graveyard, we can probably get it. First, we kill a wyrm and get:

That's a supercharged version of Theoden. While we're clearing the graveyard, we become aware of a monster we didn't detect earlier... the Tarrasque. It's far away and asleep, so we'll leave it alone for now. Without pools of water to help us in this dungeon, clearing a graveyard takes way more time. One of the dreadlords inside picks up the Pewter rod, and we identify it as a rod of Speed. We pacify two bone golems, which will be used as barrier to shoot non passwall undead from afar. Soon, only the drujs remain in the pit. And one of them teleports us right next to the dragon pit... Since we don't really want to deal with five ancient etheral wyrms, we cast Word of Destruction to get rid of the threat. Oh yes, the Tarrasque is now awake and has already found a path to the pit, so we retreat a bit and prepare for the fight. With three healing potions, there's not much hope (our stack of 40 CCWs has been reduced to 8 thanks to all the undead from the pit). We are immune to fire and cold, which reduces by 2/3 the chance of getting badly hurt, and the Tarrasque doesn't resist lightning, so we can deal a good amount of damage, but we'll have to be lucky it doesn't decide to go on a disenchantment rampage. Well during the fight, the Tarrasque seems to have fun creating pools of lava and then breathing cold to turn them into rubble. We take advantage of the created rubble to heal twice from disenchantment breaths, and when it breathes disenchantment for the third time, its health is low enough for the damage to be negligible. We collect the loot, which is a bunch of crap and:

Code:

o) the Band of Tulkas <+4>
Dropped by The Tarrasque at 4700 feet (level 94).
+4 strength.
+4 dexterity.
+4 constitution.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by lightning.
When activated, it grants or extends haste (+10 to speed) for 75+1d75
turns.
Takes 604 to 1200 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 92.1%

We finish off the few drujs remaining in the pit and collect more loot:

Code:

g) the Shuriken of the Black Ninja (5d6) (+15,+5)
Found lying on the floor in a pit at 4700 feet (level 94).
Slays orcs, trolls, giants.
Branded with poison.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Returns when thrown.

But we're not a ninja...

Code:

p) the Soft Leather Armour 'Gillaian' [8,+42]
Found lying on the floor in a pit at 4700 feet (level 94).
Provides resistance to nexus.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.

Too bad all the power went into supercharged AC... Our pack is now full, so we recall to drop and donate some things. We compare the three xbows we have and keep the best one, which still cannot compete with our current bow. We also restock on cure critical wounds, as we have used most of our stack. We recall back down on a level with a couple vaults and many uniques. Our goal now is to reach 4900ft, kill as many uniques as we can without consuming too many resources and find our last spellbook. First on the list is Ithaqua. We try to get to him without waking up too many monsters, but unfortunately we wake up Atlas. No chance fighting that guy in melee with our weak AC, we'll have to shoot him from a safe distance. But first we need to find a safe area for shooting, and the level is quite crowded with nasties. Unfortunately, Ithaqua summons some demons, and one summoned horned reaper manages to stomp over Atlas before we manage to finish him off (how's that even possible eludes me). We resume the fight with Ithaqua, but he decides to call for more help and brings Vecna to the fight. We teleport him away and pacify a monastic lich to slow down the horde of summons. Ithaqua crushes our poor lich, but we have time to shoot him to critical. He starts to flee, we wait for him to turn back and finish him off. And his summons. Now we're standing in a sea of loot. We pick up some healings, quaff a couple potions of experience, and collect the following artifacts:

Another neither good nor bad random weapon. We kill a knight templar and get this bow:

Code:

t) the Long Bow of Aglaur (x4) (+10,+19) <+4, +1>
Dropped by a knight Templar at 4700 feet (level 94).
+4 stealth.
+1 shooting power.
Provides resistance to fire, chaos.
Provides protection from confusion.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Sustains constitution.
Grants the ability to see invisible things.
Grants the ability to sense dragons.
When activated, it turns your skin to stone (a bonus of +40 to AC, and a
penalty of -5 to speed) for 60+1d40 turns.
Takes 147 to 162 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 89.3%

Extra power, but no extra shots... And Vecna is back. He resists lightning, so we switch to our second arrow. We bring him down to half health and he teleports away. We clear the summons, wait for him to come back and give him the ultimate death. And here's his drop:

Nice set of resistances. Next is Carcharoth. He can be shocked. We have to teleport him away once to destruct some hounds he summoned, but after finding him again, we finish him off. We get the following artifacts from him:

Quite nice, but I'll stick with Numenor for the pStun. We kill a death knight and he drops a new staff (Mulberry staff of Holiness). We approach the first vault on the level and clear its outer rooms. We find a nice long bow of Lothlorien (x5), another ring of speed +13, and this staff:

The inner room of the vault contains Eol and Fundin... and a drolem. Fundin is not evil and resists lightning, so we nether bolt him to death. Eol is evil and living, so we simply cast Shadow Touch/Shield and melee him. Nothing useful inside the inner vault, but we get these from Fundin (Eol was not generous at all):

At this point, we have dropped most of our supplies and basic spellbooks to pick up all the artifacts found on this level. There's a second lesser vault identical to the one we cleared, but we don't have room for more items. We'll just check if there's nothing new... We kill a dreadmaster that picked up a few items and identify a new scroll (of *Acquirement*, which brings forth a ring of speed +10 and some squelchable items). In the outer area, we also find a Muddy potion (of *Enlightenment*) and a Zirconium rod (of Healing). The inner room has Ungoliant (which we teleport away) and some vibration hounds. There's also an artifact inside, and at this point, we have to drop our CCWs to get this ring:

Very nice. Our current ring of Fire gives us nether resistance and pConf, but if we can get those elsewhere, we can definitely use this one instead. Time to recall then. We clear our inventory and restock on everything we had to leave behind in the dungeon. We recall back to 4700ft on an unremarkable level. We kill some random stuff while going to the closest down stairs. And we get this random drop:

Our arkenstone has recharged and we go down to 4750ft. We spot an ainu pit, with Huan and Tiamat close. With Thranduil, we also detect Gothmog, Lungorthin and Polyphemus in the distance. And a strange room filled with high undead (Deep Crypt). Of course, one of the ainur immediately send us to the opposite side of the level, so our first targets will be Gothmog and Huan now. Both come to us at the same time, so we'll have to teleport the first one we see to deal with the other one. Huan it is. He resists lightning, so our arrow won't do much. We start with nether bolts, then switch to melee, while healing with drain life and shadow touch, until his sound and shard breaths bring us to critical health. We use a potion and resume hitting until he finally dies. Without dropping anything particuliar. Next is now Tiamat, since Gothmog hasn't returned yet, and she comes with a whole pack of wyrms. We start clearing the pack, but a great wyrm of many colours summons an ancient wyrm, and we have to move back to get rid of the problem. Also Tiamat is awake. She's also faster than her minions, so she comes first and we can fight her in melee in an antisummon corridor. Although we shielded ourselves and our AC is now 200, she still claws and bites us for 200-300 damage a round, so we have to use our precious healing potions. We get rid of her and her (non-ancient) wyrm escort, and collect our rewards:

Code:

n) the Cloak of Thingol [1,+18] <+3>
Dropped by Tiamat, Celestial Dragon of Evil at 4750 feet (level 95).
+3 dexterity.
Provides resistance to acid, fire, cold.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Prevents paralysis.
When activated, it tries to recharge a wand or staff, destroying the wand
or staff on failure.
Takes 252 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 98.3%

Lame.

Code:

p) the Mage Staff 'Cobalt Focus' (1d1) (+0,+0) <+3>
Dropped by a Great Wyrm of Many Colours at 4750 feet (level 95).
+3 strength.
+3 intelligence.
Provides immunity to cold.
Provides resistance to lightning, mana.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Speeds regeneration. Grants the ability to see invisible things.
Combat info:
This weapon should be wielded with both hands.
4.0 blows/round.
Average damage/round: 84.

Impressive... if you don't plan on using it for the damage. Also, while fighting all those wyrms, we reached:

Lvl: 48, HP: 945, SP: 377

The Deep Crypt simply has no items, so we destruct it along with all the undead inside. We open a chest... for a copy of Kelek's (*sigh*) and the shield of Gil-Galad!

Code:

o) the Mithril Shield of Gil-galad [16,+20] <+5, +1>
Taken from a chest found at 4750 feet (level 95).
+5 wisdom.
+1 light.
Provides resistance to acid, lightning, dark, disenchantment.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Sustains wisdom, dexterity.
When activated, it fires a line of light in all eight cardinal
directions, inflicting 10d8 points of damage on creatures caught in one
of the lines.
Takes 350 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 92.5%

Getting our last spellbook from a chest would be awesome, but that's just a dream... We destroy more stuff we don't want to fight, mainly ancient wyrms, and get ready for our next target, Lungorthin. With our demon killing arrow, it doesn't take long before we have another dead unique on our list. We pick up a staff of banishment from one of the demons, and this weapon:

More crap to donate. We make our way towards the ainu pit again, only to see that Gothmog has been teleported next to the pit. As the first ainur start to make their move towards us, Gothmog surely follows. Soon he's back and we shoot him to death. We collect this bow from his corpse:

With the higher to-dam, this bow is as good as our current one vs non lightning resistant monsters, and even slightly better vs demons, but worse vs others due to the x2 multiplier (also meaning shorter range). Time to clear the ainu pit for consumables. And the first one we kill drops these gloves:

Code:

p) the Set of Gauntlets of Berchod (+8,+11) [3,+20] <+3>
Dropped by a Maia at 4750 feet (level 95).
+3 constitution.
+3 tunneling.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Sustains intelligence.
Grants the ability to sense giants.
Grants telepathic awareness.
When aimed, it shoots a radius-2 frost ball that inflicts 48 points of
damage at the centre, which your device skill increases by 61 percent.
Takes 260 to 288 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 94.8%

More slaying gloves... The only problem with those ainur is the frequent teleporting away from the blue wizards. But they drop a lot of potions, and in no time we have a full stack of 40 potions of restore mana, as well as a larger stack of healing potions. One of their summons also drops this sword:

Would have been great with slay evil and higher to-dam. At this point, the ainu pit is pretty much cleared, and while we chase the remaining ainur around, Polyphemus finally manages to catch up on us. We need to be careful, as we dropped our first spellbook to make room for that last artifact, so we don't have access to phase door anymore. And Polyphemus hits hard. Fortunately, he's also slower and moves a bit erratically, so we can keep a safe distance, just having to deal with his ice and water bolts. We eventually dies, and we have to drop two more spellbooks to pick up:

Both nice for protection and resists. We have to drop our CCWs again when a blue wizard drops another artifact:

Code:

j) the Full Plate Armour of Belkaist (-3) [62,+10] <+2>
Dropped by a Blue Wizard at 4750 feet (level 95).
+2 constitution.
Provides resistance to cold, sound, chaos, disenchantment.
Provides protection from stunning.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Makes you float just above the floor. Grants the ability to see invisible
things.
When activated, it attempts to put to sleep all monsters around you.
Takes 208 to 230 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 94.3%

Makes you float just above the floor??? Asking our dungeon master what this is, it happens to be the power of levitation, which now replaces feather falling. Nice. Seconds later, another blue wizard drops Celebrimbor, and it's harder and harder to drop something to pick up these artifacts. Well the lone potion of *Healing* we carry has to go, I hope we won't miss it.

Last thing to check on the level is a minor vault, which we loot quickly to get a potion of experience. Then it's time to recall and sort out all the artifacts we picked up. And restock on stuff we dropped behind.

We recall back to 4750ft. We have a thunder dragon pit, a minor vault with Ungoliant inside, and a larger vault that could have goodies inside. Thranduil also reveals Pazuzu inside the larger vault. Since there are ancient wyrms inside the pit, it gets promptly destroyed. We kill a grand master thief and get a Gnarled staff (of the Magi). Not really useful now that we have over 40 potions of restore mana, the stack will probably last us for the rest of the game. We approach the large vault and enter it from the top, without noticing a mandragora in the corridor below us. And soon the shriek it makes wakes up everything in the vicinity, including of course everything in the vault. Fortunately, we have 11 rods of teleport other now. We'll have to be careful though, as there is a true believer in the vault, and he can easily disrupt our spells. We wait a bit, and he finds the way to us. Since he's far away in the corridor, we prompty tell him to go elsewhere so we can use our spells and clear the vault. Next in line is Pazuzu, and we make good use of our demon slaying arrow. He doesn't drop anything that isn't squelched though. The rest of the vault doesn't pose any problem, but except a few artifacts, we find nothing useful inside.

Code:

m) the Augmented Chain Mail of Caspanion (-2) [42,+20] <+2, +3>
Found lying on the floor in a vault at 4750 feet (level 95).
+2 intelligence.
+2 wisdom.
+3 constitution.
Provides resistance to acid, poison.
Provides protection from confusion.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
When activated, it destroys all doors around you.
Takes 33 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 96.2%

More random weapons not better and not worse than anything this far. Really at this point the only thing we really look for is our last spellbook. Better cloak and gloves would not hurt, but the book is top priority, so we can switch from shooting to melee and get useful undead slaves. We go see what's inside the other vault, and since we're wounded after battling some wyrms, we teleport Ungoliant away. And after some more killing, we reach:

Lvl: 49, HP: 968, SP: 393

Just one more level to go! The vault is now cleared, and we have picked up more stuff.

An unbeliever would do decent damage with this, but it's pointless to us. Since we have 12 potions of healing for this dive, we may as well try to remove Ungoliant from the list of living threats. She can be shocked, but instead we choose to buff ourselves and fight her in an antisummon corridor. Since she can also be stunned, we use ice storm here and there to lessen the melee damage while we strike with our sword. She tries to flee, but her path is blocked by some mountain ogres that wanted to see the fight. After all, we didn't even have to quaff a single healing potion during the fight, putting a vampiric brand and using drain life was enough to maintain our hps high enough. We pick up two more artifacts and recall.

u) the Morning Star 'Arand' (2d6) (+26,+20) <+2, +4>
Dropped by Ungoliant, the Unlight at 4750 feet (level 95).
+2 intelligence.
+4 wisdom.
Provides resistance to acid, nether.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Grants the ability to see invisible things. Prevents paralysis. Blessed
by the gods.
When activated, it enchants you with an aura of confusion that causes
your next attack to confuse the target.
Takes 208 to 230 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 97.4%
Combat info:
4.0 blows/round.
Average damage/round: 202.4.

More stuff to donate. As always, we clear our inventory and restock. While running around in town, we also kill someone who drops some Light Brown potions (of Poison) we never saw before. Back to 4750ft, we detect Baphomet, who shouldn't be a problem to kill. There's an ethereal dragon pit on the level, but as always at these depths we have to leave it alone. Baphomet actually puts up a good fight, but we shoot him to death. We collect nothing valuable from his corpse though. Finally, we can take some stairs down to 4800ft. No uniques on the level, and nothing really interesting. Time to go down again. We just kill a small pack of ethereal hounds for the experience and wait for our arkenstone to recharge. On 4850ft is Atlas and a couple gorth rooms, but again no vault or pit. This time, no horned reaper to save the big titan. Good old shoot and phase strategy, stopping a few times to heal from boulders with drain life, and we have one less unique to care of. We pick up a good sling from his corpse:

Still having those artifact shots and pebbles, we check the damage we could make with that sling. It is similar per shot to our bow, but we have only two shots per round with the sling instead of three. We clear a pack of nether hounds, again for the experience, and finally take the stairs to 4900ft. This is as deep as we can dive before the endgame. No uniques, but the level looks promising, with a big vault in the middle. No enlightenment potion or mass banishment yet, but we have our trusty bow and stack of teleport other rods. We start to clear the vault, getting the Balli Stonehand axe as first reward, when suddenly some demons and dragons are summoned around us. It's the Emperor Quylthulg calling for help. We dispatch (or teleport away) the annoying Ds and Us and attempt to wipe Mr Q from a corner with our ice storm spell. After a lot of castings and mana restoring, we hear a scream of agony. We pick up the seeker arrow of Gondor and some mithril arrows of slay evil, which could be useful against lightning resistant evil monsters. We clear the vault thoroughly, find some more spellbooks, but still no book 6. More artifacts to donate:

Nice, but no to-dam at all. We can slay undead, demons and dragons with our artifact missiles, so for regular evil critters, we'll simply use ego slay evil arrows.

Code:

p) the Iron Helm 'Holhenneth' [7,+10] <+2>
Dropped by a water troll at 4900 feet (level 98).
+2 intelligence.
+2 wisdom.
+2 searching skill.
Provides protection from blindness, confusion.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Grants the ability to see invisible things.
When activated, it detects all treasure, objects and monsters in the
immediate area, and maps out a small portion of the level around you.
Takes 196 to 385 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 97.4%

We recall to clear some inventory space, and resume the hunt for our last spellbook. We recall back on a vaultless level, which contains a graveyard and an ainu pit. Many blue wizards inside the ainu pit, which means clearing the graveyard first. We get sent away by a crypt thing, which makes us discover that Kronos has spawned on the level. Since he's next to the ainu pit, he'll have to wait a bit. We pacify a nightcrawler to slow the other undead while we shoot them. We clear the pit except for the drujs and a few nightwalkers that we have to teleport away. Unfortunately, we can't kill the drujs without having to enter the pit, which means being in sight of five of them. If we want to check the loot, we'll have to use a scroll of mass banishment we got from one of the undead. And the scroll is wasted, as there is nothing of value remaining inside. Except that we find this just outside of the pit:

This is clearly our best weapon by far, and we equip it at once. We lose a bit of speed, but we now have all four immunities. We lure Kronos away from the ainu pit. He resists lightning, so we'll use some arrows of slay evil on him. We must avoid his deadly melee attack, as we don't have scrolls to lay down protective glyphs. We get an interesting fight when he starts breathing shards and sound, and summons a few titan friends. We heal the damage and teleport away the nastier titans, and soon Kronos also flees away. We rest until he comes back and finish him off. We collect the following artifacts:

Good AC, big stat boosts, nice set of resists, and a great activation. Definitely will store that in our house. We must remember that killing Morgoth will strip us of all our true artifacts, so we will need replacements for them.

More melee gloves. We storm (literally) the pit with Shadow Touch and our Stormspire lance, but we have to come back frequently, as the blue wizards keep teleporting us around. We watch our experience increase slowly, and finally we reach:

*** Lvl: 50, HP: 982, SP: 401 ***

The pit is finally cleared, and we recall to donate all the artifacts we won't need. Back inside the dungeon, we find the Cat Lord and process to kill him. The only thing he drops is this crap sword:

At this point, we don't care about experience, so the only things left to do are find that damn last spellbook and clear the unique list. Seems that only Omarax and Ancalagon are left, if we don't count uniques on the surface (like Farmer Maggot... we'll get them eventually) and the Icky Queen. We decide to go down to 4950ft and stairscum from there to generate the last uniques, or a juicy vault. After all, we just need to avoid Sauron for now, though I'm sure we could take are of him with our new lance. We get an Engraved Gold rod (of Restoration), and this helm:

Oh my... that's an insane ring. Too powerful, so it had to aggravate. We lure Omarax outside the vault and kill him. We go back inside and clear the rest of the vault, but we don't get anything special except a few consumables. We recall, clear our inventory, decide to take a day off from diving, and go back to Hobbiton.

And as we deliver a tremendous blow with our lance, the poor hobbit is relieved from his trouble. He was carrying a spear of slay troll for whatever reason... While we're at it, we go to the Brandywine Bridge and get rid of the Sackville-Baggins family. We spend the rest of the day wandering around in the Shire, and when the sun sets we recall back to our house in Carn Dum, as another day will wait for us in Angband.

Why are you so concerned about the last dungeon book? You're having no trouble slaying deep uniques like Carcharoth, so Morgoth and certainly Sauron should go down without it. Especially with Mana(!) resistance...

Why are you so concerned about the last dungeon book? You're having no trouble slaying deep uniques like Carcharoth, so Morgoth and certainly Sauron should go down without it. Especially with Mana(!) resistance...

The last dungeon book contains two powerful spells: one that allows to turn undead vs other monsters instead of just pacifying them, and one that grants extra critical hits to melee attacks. My current weapon does 471 vs evil, which is probably enough even vs Morgoth, but the extra crits would surely help.

Concerning mana resistance, it's unreliable just like all other high resists, so it's nice to have, but not that nice. Even more considering that the few items that grant it are quite crappy. My concern is the level 120+ postgame uniques that can cause manastorms for over 700 damage. Since you cannot keep your regular artifacts after you kill Morgoth, I'll have to add mana resistance somewhere on randarts, but it'll have to be rare. TomeNET has mana resistance on Crystal DSMs, but that's probably too common to get. Maybe add it to randart Crystal DSMs.

Yes, in PWMAngband you have both normal artifacts and random artifacts if you have ALLOW_RANDOM_ARTIFACTS option set, so you find twice as many artifacts as a normal Angband game if you play solo. With multiple players, you would get less since you have to share the normal artifact set with all other players.

This has changed... Before the update, this was giving +5 speed instead of +1 light, and didn't have resistance to light, chaos or mana. This is a straight upgrade to Incanus, so we equip it. We recall to 1000ft to look for the Icky Queen. And after stairscumming between 1000ft and 1050ft for a while, we find her. Of course we get nothing from killing her, but now our list of uniques is pretty much filled, as only Ancalagon remains before Sauron. We recall to town then back to the dungeon... and Ancalagon is there at 4950ft! He's alone in a corner of the level, which is quite empty except the big dragon and Sauron. Of course, Sauron is awake and manages to find a path to us, even if he was generated far away at start. We teleport him away so we can fight Ancalagon one on one. Haste, Shield, Shadow Touch and we're ready. We don't forget to stun him while meleeing so his own melee is less deadly. This should spare us a few healing potions during the fight. We even manage to land a *GREAT* hit on him with our 30lbs lance. We have to empty our staff of healing and zap our two rods, but otherwise we only have to use one potion of healing. He flees, and we kill a great wyrm of many colours he summoned before he recovers. A few more hits with our lance and he is no more. His loot: a lot of squelched items, an ego dracolisk scale mail, a scythe of slicing (Holy Avenger) that is almost identical to the one we have stored in our house, and the last spellbook... of the rogue class (Great Shadows). We go back to 4900ft, where we get these artifacts from a vault:

Code:

r) the Metal Cap of Elweth [3,+20]
Found lying on the floor in a vault at 4900 feet (level 98).
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Grants telepathy.

We switch levels and find more vaults. We quaff a potion of *enlightenment* we got from a maia... and it is there. Few steps northeast in the biggest of the two vaults on the level. The spellbook of necromancy (Darkest Magic). We take advantage of the full enlightenment effect of the potion to check what monsters are inside the vault. The book is under a giant roc in a compartment with a some baddies and a nexus quylthulg, but no (book) threat like elementals. We go immediately to that area (the compartment is the first area when entering the Jigsaw vault from the north), teleport away Sauron (yes he was in that area) and everything else I don't want to lose time fighting, and enter the vault. We manage to get our next turn before the nexus quylthulg and kill him. There's also a greater rotting quylthulg inside, but he decides to teleport us to him so we can teleport him away before something nasty happens. In fact, we grab the spellbook before anything prevents us from having it safely in our bakpack. And with this, we can learn the last seven necromantic spells: Rune of Protection (we can get rid of our scrolls now), Cloud of Draining (the ball variant of the drain life effect), Attack (turn undead versus other monsters -- time to get an army of black reavers to fight for us!), Darkness Storm (same spell monsters use, but half as good at level 50), Death (mostly a joke spell), Mass Horrify (stuns everything on sight, but also frightens them -- I prefer Ice Storm for more reliable stunning), and the mighty Touch of Death (increases the chance of getting critical hits).

Then something horrible happens... Checking our inventory, we see we picked up an algroth corpse, so we drop it and decide to try that new Attack spell. We raise dead, getting a mummified orc (shouldn't it be a mummified TROLL?), and a skull druj from a skeleton on the floor. We command the skull druj to attack with our spell... and the game crashes.